On The Application of Creativity in Biotic Use
by Jaspirian
Summary: Gavin, a hapless student, would dearly like to see his thesis proven accurate. In his mind, the best way to do that would be through rigorous testing; Cerberus agrees.
1. Chapter 1

"Your conclusions are... different," the teacher capitulated, and adjusted his spectacles. Laser eye surgery was readily available, of course, but a good pair of bifocals gave off a certain image.

"And your creativity is... commendable," another added, and for a second their target let himself feel a spot of self-confidence.

"Thank you. I-"

"However," came the interruption he should've been expecting, "your methods are laughable."

"I couldn't-"

"Your reasoning is flawed and incomplete."

"The results of my-"

"Your results," a stern-looking professor replied, "are nonexistent."

"My findings-"

No chance to get a word in edgewise. The barrage continued.

"Your adherence to rebellion is extremely sophomoric."

"You lack proper perspective for your paper's broad statements."

"Most theses at least pretend to have a logical course of reasoning."

"Don't you know? Critizing the military is out of vogue!"

The men laughed, unintentionally giving their charge a brief second to speak.

"I-I-well, I never intended to criticize, only to suggest that maybe-"

"Maybe what? Maybe a theoretical physics graduate student might have figured out something that years of military research hasn't?"

Forced into a corner. No way out but the truth. All he could do was stand by his principles. He balled his fists and gritted his teeth.

"That is my contention, yes."

More laughing. More jeers.

"We'll get back to you," the man who'd voiced the first objections said. "We have to... network with our colleagues-"

at that point he broke into a guffaw. The holograms switched off. The room went black.

_We have to laugh about your life's work and toss it in a __waste bin_. That was the gist of what that meant, he thought fiercely. The pencil in his hand tensed and threatened to crack; he released his grip and put the thing away. Violence was wrong, even when following the sudden nosedive his life had just taken.

This fellow was Gavin Rochester, not that he liked the name much. He was 24 and had no hobbies. His personal life wouldn't have filled up an Extranet dating profile: no living, non-extraneous relatives, no previous romantic relationships, didn't watch much besides the news, didn't particularly like long walks in the rain and had never touched a piña colada in his life.

In fact, Gavin had never imbibed a drop of alcohol or used a stimulant: a natural squeamishness and nervous personality had effectively quelled any desire for the stuff.

Plainly speaking, the only thing on that dating profile (non-fictional: he had long ago been forced by his roommates to make one, though he'd never received even one sincere reply) was a simple statement: I love physics!

And so on this auspicious night, the night of his thesis presentation and defense, it's perhaps not so surprising that Gavin was getting rip-roaring drunk at one of the seediest dives in town.

"Hey, can I get some stout?" The bartender nodded and served up a foaming mug. A bleary-eyed and wobbly Gavin clapped his hand down on the man's arm as he reached for his drink.

"Buncha... buncha old fogeys," Gavin griped. His heart wasn't in the grip, so the man was able to snatch his hand away. The bartender shot him an apologetic but resigned look, like this wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened. Not that Gavin knew anything about that.

"Bioticsh're..." he struggled to find the words, waving his hands to try to illustrate his point. "...'re compli... complick... com-pil-ated." The bartender, a fuzzily blue person-shaped blob, found somewhere else to be.

"They sure are," a soft and smooth voice agreed from beside him. Gavin started the motion that would become a turn, realized it would instead turn into an undignified flop onto the floor, and thought better of it.

"You know bioticsh?" He slurred, trying to peek at the new arrival from the corner of his eye.

"I do. The name's Maria." She held out a hand and managed to catch his when it veered a few inches off-course.

"Want to par... partish... be in my shtudy?" He chuckled before she could answer. "Not that it exishts anymore." Gavin frowned and took another drink. Not the smartest decision he'd ever made, but then all his supposedly intelligent decisions so far had ended up with a mess of a career and a mountain of debt he was trying hard not to think about right now.

"Tell me about it," the silky voice implored. "What happened?"

Gavin squinted at her, trying to puzzle out why she was so interested in his work: no other women had been before, though he hadn't stopped trying to ploy them with military this and biological research that. Women were, beyond their textbook qualities, largely a mystery to Gavin. He'd never got more than a kiss from a drunk girl at a high school party and had been extremely flustered by the teasing that he endured afterwards. In the end he'd decided that women were a completely perplexing equation that he just wasn't built to solve; he felt like Turing's Enigma Decoder posed with a Keyword cipher: nothing was wrong with his equipment, but his programming was unsuited for the task.

As it happens, it might have been for the best that Gavin's beer goggles had turned into beer bifocals and finally some sort of foggy beer window panes. He had no experience with the fairer sex, and this inexperience turned into babbling and mind-melting nervousness when confronted with a particularly attractive female specimen. He simply didn't have the experience, and what he did was all bad: teasing, harsh jokes and bullying. Nothing Mass Effect technology could do about human nature. So he didn't notice eyes popping when she walked over to him, nor her figure or just how much she looked like some half-forgotten celebrity. All she looked like was a fuzzy outline with fleshy pink on top, soft white in the middle and black on bottom. Frankly, his certainty that she was female at all came from her voice. So perhaps this was better. Or perhaps, worse.

"Biotic connecshuns," he explained, "with nerves." By habit he was being careful. In the cut-throat world of biological science, spilling experimental secrets was tantamount to career suicide. If you could figure something out, someone else could just as easily. Easier, since they knew there was something to figure. Often the only advantage you had was being just that single step ahead. "I shpoke out againsht the military. They didn't like that."

"I'm sorry to hear it," she coolly replied. "The military can be so... rigid."

"Exshactly." He waved a finger in what he figured was her general direction. "No... flexshibility."

She giggled and rubbed his arm, leaning into him. He felt something soft but couldn't really identify it. "Good point!" He nodded and grinned lopsidedly. It had been a good point. He was glad she'd noticed.

"Well," she murmured in his ear. "I'd love to hear more about your research, but this is a little too public. How about you come back to my place and we can... talk."

He narrowed his eyes. "Ishn't that code for sexshual inter... intra... secksh? Or did you mean... shomething elsh?"

He heard what the bartender would later describe as a world-weary, exasperated sigh. "Yes. Sure. Come back to my place and we can talk about which I meant."

Gavin thought about this proposal. Even drunk to his eyeballs, he wasn't stupid by any means. He was wary of sharing his secrets, but then again he didn't see much point in keeping under wraps a thesis project that had pretty much got him laughed out of the field. And after all, wasn't tonight about forsaking all his principles? A one night stand (he'd studied the terminology at one point) sounded like the perfect end to the evening. Almost a little too perfect.

Too perfect?

Gavin considered that thought, but dismissed it. What could he possibly have to lose?

They took an aircar back to her apartment, which he could tell was extremely expensive and nicely furnished in a blurry sort of way. He complimented what he thought was a painting and turned out to be a statue, but tried not to let the mixup get himself down. She guided him more like a dog than a lover through several rooms and pushed him back on her bed. He bounced back up and snapped his fingers.

"Sho it wash secksh! I knew it," he crowed. It felt good to be right. Always had.

"Sure is," she replied. Somehow her voice was getting less silky and more irritated. Or maybe that was the booze talking. "Turn around and we'll start."

Gavin frowned. He'd seen many diagrams, some more academic and some less. He was pretty sure this wasn't how it worked. "Shouldn't we be fashing each other?"

She let the irritation seep through. "Turn around or I'll find another cute student to take back to my home and screw the brains out of."

He didn't need to be told twice. Gavin turned and waited. Instead of anything out of Formax's more vanilla issues, however, he was met with a sharp crack to the head and then, darkness.

When he awoke, he was met with a tremendous headache. This was something he'd expected as an outcome of his drinking spree, but he hadn't thought the pain would be quite so splitting. Perhaps, he reflected, he'd drunk more than he thought. He rolled out of bed with a groan, holding his head, and tried to recall just what had happened last night.

The slow trickle of memories was spurred by the unfamiliar walls that met his squinting gaze, and then unleashed by a feminine yawn from the soft-far softer than his own!-bed he sat on.

"Come back to bed," the voice implored, and he turned to see his supposed lover for the first time.

To him, she was a bombshell. Others might have described her as a picturesque beauty, the kind that was popular nowadays in Asari films. The kind that turned ten out of ten heads. Maybe nine. And she was half naked in the same bed he'd crawled out of.

Gavin's brain struggled for something, anything intelligent to say. His mouth reviewed the options and settled at last on "Bwah."

The woman giggled, shifting her auburn hair over her white skin. She looked utterly at home and even slightly predatorial under her milky sheets. She beckoned him with a fiery look. "Last night you passed out before we could get anywhere. Care to finish what we started?" She bit her lip slightly. "I know some good home remedies for headaches."

Instead of falling into bed with her, as Gavin surely wanted to do, he slowly stood and started to back away. She pouted and leaned forward, exposing a very lacy bra which Gavin figured was having lower back problems of its own. "What's wrong? Am I not good enough?" There was even a tear in her eye.

"Please," he frowned. "I'm not stupid. A girl like you takes a guy like me home and wants to hear all about his research?" He shook his head. "That's a nice idea, but only an idiot would fall for that trick." Or a drunk, he thought to himself. He didn't remember spilling anything too important, but there were still large gaps in his memory.

"Why so paranoid?" She chided, and sat up fully. Gavin didn't quite know where to look. "Isn't it enough that I like your type?"

"Not a chance. The improbable is improbable for a reason. Hope makes people forget that." he stated it like a litany, and she sighed.

"Alright. I guess we do this the hard way. Easy for me, hard for you." She slid a tableside drawer open and pulled out what looked like the kind of electric baton that riot police carried.

"Hold on." Gavin held his hands up and backed into the wall. "You're with the police? I'm not in trouble, am I?" He couldn't remember doing anything illegal, but maybe with the drinking last night... "may I remind you that under your martial code, outstanding force is prohibited unless warranted by resistive actions."

"No on both questions." She smiled and fired up the baton. The electrical activity was pretty, in a sort of remove-all-opposition-semi-humanely kind of way.

"Phew." Gavin relaxed. "Wait, but then-"

And the baton hit him, and he was out. Gavin fell to the floor in a crumpled heap with absolutely no grace.

In time, he would learn this was how many first meetings with Cerberus went.


	2. Chapter 2

The thick electrical hum was the first suggestion that something was wrong, but it wasn't immediately obvious what that sound meant. Gavin reached groggily for his omnitool to shut off its alarm, but couldn't find it on his bedside table. Actually, he couldn't find his bedside table at all.

His thought process went something like this: first wishing his classes started later in the day, then realizing he might not have any reason to go to school at all, then remembering the odd bed he'd last woken up in, then remembering the baton. After that things seemed to fall into place.

He took a moment to reorient himself, and wasn't all that surprised in the end to find out that hum belonged to energy netting over the doorway of a grey-white ferrocrete cell.

He made a quick inventory: one bed (hard cot, no sheets), one grungy toilet (closed by some hermetic cover apparatus), one doorway (impenetrable), and one speaker (silent). He didn't bother testing the barrier trapping him in; the chance that he'd be that lucky was so improbable as to be virtually nonexistent. Also in the room were four camera orbs, each capable of surveilling the entire room from their respective ceiling corners. He waved to one experimentally, but wasn't terribly surprised when it didn't wave back.

After checking himself over (still wearing his student's uniform and mostly unharmed, except for a couple diminishing bruises on his head), Gavin sat on the cot and waited. He figured it was the best option available to him.

In the end, he didn't have to wait all that long. After what he figured was about an hour, the sound of boots began to fill the hallway. He could hear muted voices that lowered to a whisper and then died out right before his cell. The two captors stopped and stood right in front of his door.

The 40-something man standing there had a set of scars across his face, a full set of them, likely from some animal's lucky swipe. They'd cut across his right eye and taken a large chunk out of his eyelid, and the healing had left him with a semi-permanent glare. He was wearing heavy brown armor, which seemed a little odd to Gavin. In the vids, prison administrators tended to wear plain clothes or suits to show confidence. There inside his cell, Gavin supposed the vids didn't always get everything right.

Next to him was someone familiar. She was wearing a mostly skintight suit in black and had her arms folded, expression cool as ice. A great deal of her allure had been replaced by an air of determination, but it was impossible to completely extinguish. She had a look in her eye that made Gavin pretty sure he'd been doomed the second he'd wandered into her claws. She looked like a person used to getting what she wanted. Any nervousness he might have felt due to her beauty or her gender was replaced with a kind of dangerous respect. As in, she was dangerous, and he respected that.

Just above her left breast was a copper diamond flanked by two lines bending towards the bottom point. He was sure it meant something, but it eluded him.

"This is the scientist I told you about," she explained to her companion.

"Gavin Rochester," the prisoner nodded and waved. He didn't want to be unfriendly.

"Shut up," the third roared. Gavin nodded and did just that.

"You're a lucky sonuvabitch, understand? Fact is, I've been told you have to be treated better'n most of the riffraff here. Them's the rules." He snorted. "I don't like rules."

Gavin figured that wasn't the case, but he chose not to articulate that.

Maria slid in smoothly. "Our warden is right. I'm afraid our accommodations were picked on short notice. The cells here are made for, well..."

"Prisoners?" Gavin offered. The warden growled but Maria nodded.

"Exactly."

"And I'm not one of those?"

"We see you as a potential business associate," she supplied. "We employ a lot of humanity's best and brightest scientists. We're trying to create a future for the human race-and you're here because you just might fit into that picture."

Gavin thought about that for a moment. He decided at some length that it sounded true.

"And my mobility?"

The two outside his cell glanced at each other. "Your... mobility?" Maria ventured.

"Yes. I don't want to be stuck in this cell for the rest of my life, but I also don't want to be stuck in a shady, talent-kidnapping organization if you folks turn out to be a bunch of crazies. Is there upward mobility? Can I get references, accreditation, work experience?"

The warden's jaw unhinged and he looked ready to yell again, but Maria held him back.

"Absolutely. Many of our senior members have, during their employment with us, found tenure in extremely prestigious institutions."

"Were placed there, you mean."

She looked ready to deny it, but Gavin was pretty sure he was right. He waved her objection off before she could speak it.

"That's fine, that's fine. I don't mind it." He stood up from his cot effortlessly and wobbled, feeling unusually light on his feet. "Alright! So far I'm interested. You two came here to take me somewhere, right? I'm ready when you are."

The warden had regained his composure. "That's right. Get your ass in gear: we're gonna see if you're worth our investment."

"I sure am!" Gavin practically skipped out of his cell as soon as they deactivated the net.

"Don't you try to escape," the grizzled old man warned. "I can break you-"

"Into a thousand pieces, I bet. Me against you? No contest. You can handcuff me if you want."

The warden's eyes narrowed, but Gavin wasn't finished.

"Also, this isn't a ploy to get you to drop your guard so I can escape. I mean, it is so you'll drop your guard and trust me, but not so I can flee. I'll let you know that could be what I was thinking as a show of good faith. Anyway, handcuffs?"

His two captors looked at each other, clearly flummoxed. Maria coughed. "That, um... won't be necessary. You're our guest, even if your stay here is a little... fixed."

"True. Oh, right." Gavin snapped his fingers, not noticing the way his captors tensed when he did. "What's the name of this organization?"

"Of course," Maria smiled. "We're Cerberus." She tapped on the symbol she was wearing.

The academic raised his eyebrows.

"We may have a bad history with some," she offered, "but our motives-"

"No, no." He waved offhandedly. "I haven't heard anything like that. But if you're big enough for the public to be aware of you, that's a good sign!"

He hummed under his breath. This day was getting better and better.

The warden was in good humor now, but Maria was gaping at him. "You haven't heard about us? Not a single thing?"

"Nope," he admitted easily. "I don't pay much attention to the news."

She massaged the bridge of her nose and sighed. This day was getting worse and worse.


	3. Chapter 3

"-And the Illusive Man, remember-"

"I remember. Is that 'Elusive'?"

"No, Illusive."

"Why Illusive? Isn't his whole point that no one knows where he is?"

Maria massaged her brow again, something that was becoming an increasingly common reflex around this man.

"That aside, do I get to speak with him?" Gavin grinned.

The warden, whose name had been grudgingly given as "Garth," no surname, snorted. "Don't get a swelled head. You're here because you just might have some use fer us. You don't just saunter in and talk to the leader of any group-no matter how dumb stupid the group might be-as a grunt."

Gavin paused and looked at Maria. She nodded.

"Shucks. Do I get to talk to him sometime soon? You know, if I prove I'm what you're looking for."

Privately, it was his philosophy-and his experience-that a leader was the most important and most informing part of any organization; that had, at least, been true in university. The material for a course could be interesting, but without someone who knew how to teach it the class turned into a real slog. Gavin also figured he'd be able to get some straight answers (from the horse's mouth, so to speak) about the organization he'd found himself suddenly a part of.

They didn't bother to answer him, and for a few moments there was silence. Maria knew it wouldn't last long, and it didn't.

"We've been walking for a while," their guest noted.

This was true. They'd been walking for almost twenty minutes now.

"Learn to live with it," Garth suggested. "This ain't a pleasure yacht you're on."

"Right." Gavin nodded. "Retrofitted asteroids usually aren't."

Garth stiffened but kept his cool. Maria actually stopped walking, eyes narrowed. "How did you know that?"

He shrugged. "Gravity?"

She pushed closer, backing him into the wall.

"Explain."

"Well..." he thought carefully. "Gravity to bruise, bruise to paint, paint to-"

"Explain... like a normal person." She resisted the urge to sigh.

"The, uh... the gravity is a little lower than Earth average, which means I'm either further away from Earth by a small amount-unlikely, since I'm essentially kidnapped, and hanging relatively close to the scene of the crime is a poor idea. Also the bruise from where you hit me is smaller than it should be after a day, meaning I got put under for a while. Probably for transport."

Maria shook her head. "Still doesn't-"

"Not finished," he interrupted. "So I'm probably far from Earth, in a place with slightly lower gravity (we can assume it's artificial because of the toilet). Rotational stations and civilian areas usually get it pretty exactly, though mixed-race locations alter theirs slightly to accommodate different species. That's usually higher, not lower, because of Turians and Krogan, though in Salarian-heavy sectors it's lower (Volus and Hanar are adaptable, Elcor are used to too high a gravity to matter, Vorcha, Asari, Batarians and Drell are essentially the same as us gravity-wise), but you folks say you're a human-only organization, so..."

Garth cut in, looking pained. "But... asteroid?"

"Well, gravity is also lightened around places where people have to go into a vacuum frequently, where gravity sometimes fails, or where there's a lot of heavy machinery and not much eezo to go around. Asteroid mines fit all three. But you say you're research-oriented, so it probably isn't still in use. That and the paint job is better than in most working locations. Oh, and the technology is updated way past what a mining operation would need, at least if my cell was anything to go by. So it's a good chance the place has been retrofitted."

Maria asked, a little plaintively: "What was that about a toilet?"

"Oh. Forgot to explain that. The top was sealed, probably so in gravity failures its contents wouldn't get everywhere. And gravity doesn't fail on planets." He grinned. "How'd I do?"

The two of them were gaping at him. They probably had been for some time. Maria spoke first.

"Are you some kind of... Sherlock Holmes or something?"

Gavin raised his eyebrows. "Who's he? I've heard the name before."

"Enormously popular mystery novels. You really haven't?"

He shrugged. "I don't read much fiction. I'm just good with logic puzzles: I eliminate the impossible and what's left has to be correct."

"Well-wait, that's what he says! You have read them!"

"Really? What an odd coincidence. I'm sure he said it much better than I did."

"So is that it? You're some kind of Sherlock copycat?"

"No, I just found this particular conclusion elementary."

"Stop that!"

Garth put his head in his hands. This was most certainly NOT in his job description.


	4. Chapter 4

Their idle chat lasted for another ten minutes before they reached the research area.

"So," Gavin announced. "This is it?"

"What," Maria sniped, "did you figure that out by analyzing the gravity again?"

"Nope." He grinned. "The electronic hums in the walls."

"What?"

Garth pointed wordlessly to the large, painted words on the wall that read "research." Maria shut up quick, and he turned to their charge.

"That's right. You ever wanted to show your results in a real lab?"

But the expression on Gavin's face wasn't the ecstatic one they'd come to expect.

"I would love to demonstrate my thesis," he began, "but it's not that simple." That, in fact, had been one of the reasons his paper had been so poorly received: he had a theory (he thought, in fact, that it was a damn good theory), but no evidence. And evidence was hard to come by.

"That's why you ain't gonna tell it just to us."

They reached a door and Garth pulled it open, ushering the other two in.

"Meet Professor Richards."

Inside a relatively cluttered laboratory stood a gaunt, mousey man with dark circles under his eyes. He glanced up at them with a wary look and fumbled for a cup of what looked like coffee. Mass Effect technology hadn't changed everything.

"That's 'Doctor' Richards, thank you. Has been for years." He peered at Gavin from behind thick glasses and sized the prisoner up. If he had shown some sign of being just a little insane, Gavin might have thought him a terrible cliché.

"Biotics, huh?"

Our protagonist realized he was being questioned after the resulting silence dragged out for a couple seconds.

"Err, yes. That was the subject of my thesis." He shifted his feet and resisted the urge to look downwards.

"Thesis. Hah." The self-proclaimed professor scoffed. "We run you through hell and spit on your research just to turn around and use it to make our institutions look smart." He shook his head. "God, am I glad to be out of academia. I bet you are too, eh?"

Gavin opened his mouth to disagree, but shut it. Not only was he basically a refugee from the university system at the moment, but it simply wouldn't do him any good.

"Alright, alright." Richards sipped his coffee and recoiled in disgust. "Too cold." He bustled about, trying to find a coffee maker underneath scattered glassware, papers and assorted lab equipment. "Well, don't keep us waiting. Have at it." Garth keyed his omnitool, projecting the distinctive chime of a recording's beginning.

The subject of attention hemmed and hawed. He had some misgivings, but they were quickly overrun; no force in the universe would be enough to keep him from talking about his research.

"Well," he sighed. "Biotics are a function to some degree of Element Zero. In humans, they're a result of organs developed from 'eezo' radiation—a chance of mutation pretty much unaffected by amount of exposure, so the mutation has become more common over the years to plateau in the last 50—and enhanced by the use of cybernetic implants of continually increasing power and decreasing side effects."

Maria was leaning against the wall, arms folded. Garth glanced down at his omnitool every now and then but largely kept his eyes on Gavin. Ex-professor Richards set his coffee brewing and nodded every now and then. When a pause appeared he impatiently seized it.

"Yes, yes. We know all that already."

"Exactly," Gavin confirmed. "That's what we _do _know about Biotics. What we don't know is much larger, and most of our original questions have barely been addressed. A lot of scientists have given up, honestly. Even the Asari—who are almost 100% Biotics and have been for thousands of years—don't really know how they work. As far as I can tell, they dropped that before humans decided farming was a pretty neat trick."

That was something Gavin had never understood: a mystery, in his opinion, was only a mystery because someone hadn't thought about it hard or smart enough.

"Now, we're not stupid. We know the beginning and the end: at the end, a biotic force or event is observed, usually as some form of telekinesis. About 50 years ago we also discovered something about the beginning. It turns out Biotics involve something neurological and there's a sense to it. Here's something that's _not _popular knowledge: every biotic effect is called upon by sequences of nerves. This helped us understand some distinctions. By mapping these nerves, we can see some interesting patterns. 'Warp' and what we call 'Singularity,' for example, are both projectiles. And indeed, there's a nerve that the two share. You can call that the 'projectile' nerve."

"Too oversimplified," Richards chided. Maria was watching intently but Garth was fighting off sleep. Gavin launched back into it.

"It's certainly more complicated than that. But if you want to learn about 'junk' sequences and how nerves actually work or are put together, you can read a book. Or my thesis proper." His lips quirked into a smile. "But that's where the discovery ended. Ignoring several small finds and the increasingly refined adaptor technology, we may as well still be in 2173, ten years ago."

"Enough stalling. Your contention?"

Gavin gritted his teeth. This was the crux.

"My contention… is that the creation of Biotic effects is only partially informed by the nerve sequencing of its production."

Richards' voice was cold. "In your own words. Don't hide behind your pre-written topic statement."

He forced the words out. "There's no reason that Biotics manifest as they do. Therefore, they must be conceptually manipulated, not fixed in nature."

The two men of science stared at each other while Garth and Maria watched. Gavin dropped his eyes first.

"Thank you for your contribution," Richards intoned. "That's all I need from you."

They led Gavin away. There were no words spoken on the long walk to his new cell.


	5. Chapter 5

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Gavin rested his chin in his hand and tapped his cheek. Normally it wasn't a particularly loud action—he did it often; it helped him concentrate—but in a cell block filled mainly with the soft hum of electrical barriers, it was irritatingly loud.

He dropped his hand and resisted the urge to slip into some other nervous habit. Surely there was _some _better use of his time.

At least he was in a better cell than before. His new quarters had been, he surmised, a general bunking area before Cerberus had swept through. It seemed to him like they'd simply installed cameras, ripped out the doors and plugged electric nets over any resulting holes. They still had bunk beds, working toilets and even a desk with a chair, where he was sitting now.

Because of how the sleeping quarters had been arranged, he could see into two other cells through the orange electric barriers: the rooms were staggered, so in front of him was a simple number "16" that he assumed belonged to the cell on the right.

That very cell's occupant was looking at him.

"Psst," the man called from behind his opaque door. Details were hard to see from behind two layers. "What are you in for?"

"Oh, you know." Gavin shrugged. "I killed a guy. He looked at me wrong."

The man hesitated. "Really? Shit, you don't look like it."

"You're right. I figured a cliché answer was appropriate for a cliché question."

"…What?"

"I'm here because I wrote a paper," he answered honestly. "They had me do a little presentation, and I'm waiting on a response. I don't think I did so well."

Gavin was aware there was an awful lot on the line, here. If they thought his work was useless, it was completely possible Cerberus would simply toss him out an airlock. You didn't become a xenophobic, talent-napping organization by having a Heart of Gold.

Unfortunately, he'd been put on the spot and he didn't think Richards had been too convinced. Faced with an ex-professor, he'd unconsciously slipped back into his old student's schema. Always explaining. Always wrong… if not in spirit, then in detail.

He was tired of it.

"Damn, dude. That's harsh. Me, I snuck in. Figured this place was abandoned." He chuckled. "Guess I was wrong, huh?"

"I guess so," Gavin agreed.

"Got a name?"

"Gavin Rochester."

"My name's Marx. Roger Marx." He waited expectantly.

"Is that so?"

"Sure is. Heard of me?"

"Nope."

"…oh."

"I'm the wrong person to ask, though. I don't watch the news."

"Well, alright." The man puffed himself back up. "I'm sure you would've otherwise. I'm the best merc Eclipse has, and I've got a death sentence in three systems."

Gavin doubted the best mercenary of any group would have walked into a shady asteroid base without checking first to see if it was really abandoned. In the end he chose to keep this, and his ignorance of an "eclipse" (not the planetary event; he understood that) to himself.

"Who's next to me, by the way?" The famous mercenary jabbed a finger at the other cell Gavin could see into. "I hear the guy moving around every now and then, but he never answered me when I tried to talk to him."

Gavin peered over and tried to pick out what he could about the figure sitting on the bottom bunk of cell 15.

"Hello?" he called, but didn't expect an answer and didn't get one.

"Well," he turned back, "The 'He' is a 'She,' for one thing."

"Oh?" Roger perked up. "Is she hot? What does she look like?"

"Well, she looks Quarian-"

"Aw man…" Roger flopped back down on his bunk. "Whatever. Call me if some hot _human_ babe moves in next door."

The woman in the cell snorted, but didn't reply. Gavin eyed her over the next couple minutes: as she relaxed, her hand kept itself clenched tight on her left arm, and she kept glancing down at it.

Finally he took advantage. "Missing your omnitool?"

She stiffened and shot a look his way. Her voice was smooth, high and almost a little melodious. "How did you know…?"

He shrugged. "I'm psychic." When she didn't immediately react he clarified. "I can read minds."

She gasped and placed a hand in front of her head, looking away.

"Just kidding. Did they take it from you when they put you here?"

She slowly nodded.

"Same here. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to do without it."

All he got was a shrug in response, but Gavin didn't miss how her hand returned to clutch at her arm.

"What do you think, Rogers?" he called to the other cell. "Would Eclipse destroy a prisoner's belongings?"

The merc laughed from atop his bunk. "Sure would, man. In a heartbeat."

The Quarian sprung to her three-toed feet and anxiously wrung her hands. "Keelah, no!"

"However," Gavin said, "That's not what these people will do." Probably. If he was right.

"Really?" She stared at his figure through her dark blue helmet.

"Really. They're not that kind of organization."

"How can you be sure?"

He shrugged. "It's a research group. Why destroy something that they could study?"

She looked hopeful for a second (if an expression like that could really be seen through a body suit) but it didn't last long. "I take it you don't know Cerberus very well." In its morbid humor, her voice thickened with the distinctive Quarian lisp.

"Oh?"

"Yes." She shrank back onto her bunk. "They don't like 'aliens'-" she forced a load of irony into the word—"very much."

That was a point he couldn't refute. "Did you have something on your tool they'd want to destroy?"

She curled up further, pulling her knees to her chest. "Yes. Maybe. I don't know."

He gave one last push. "Why are you here?"

She hesitated, but not for long. "I'm on my Pilgrimage. I've always been good with VI, and I heard rumors about a laboratory that was doing some… revolutionary research. Obviously, I got a little too swept up in my goal."

"So you wandered in here, too?"

"Not quite." She hung her head. "I, ah, followed the rumor to one of the… scarier areas of the Citadel. Turned out to be a trap. I should have known it was too good to be true." She sighed, and there was silence for a couple minutes.

"I'm Gavin Rochester, by the way," he offered. "I'd shake your hand, but…"

She laughed softly. "Moli-Yarah nar Iktomi. Nice to meet you."

"Molly?"

"That's what most humans tend to call me, yes."

Gavin nodded. "What sort of VI work do you specialize in?"

She shrugged. "Oh, you know. This and that."

A heavy pair of boots decided it was a good time to make their entrance. They tramped down the corridor and ended up in front of Gavin's cell. Turned out they belonged to Garth, who looked a little peeved.

"Rise and shine, Gavin," he intoned as if reading from a script. "The Illusive Man will see you now."

Gavin stood up and stretched his aching muscles. He couldn't help but grin as Moli froze and Richards gaped at him.

"About time."


	6. Chapter 6

Garth was silent during their little walk, though his prisoner sure had a lot of questions. After a few minutes of travel he tugged open a door, pushed Gavin in, then locked it closed.

The room was completely, utterly black. And then it wasn't.

"Gavin Rochester, I presume."

"That's, uh, that's me."

The word "intimidating" didn't quite cut it.

The realistic-looking hologram projected in front of him was seated comfortably on a chair, but that did nothing to diminish the power of his presence.

"I hear you have an interesting theory about Biotics." He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and blew out an intangible cloud of smoke.

"I… yes." Gavin fidgeted.

Something glinted in the Illusive Man's irises. "No need to be nervous. As long as you tell me what I want to know, this talk will go just fine."

"Yes sir." The ex-student felt an odd compulsion to salute, but settled for simply standing to attention.

"Good." The figure took another pull. "I'm a busy man, Rochester. Let's get straight to the point, shall we?" It didn't sound like a suggestion. "Why am I talking to you, some no-name kid?"

Well, there were a lot of reasons Gavin could think of. Off the top of his head he could imagine it was either to take his measure, to instill fear, to apologize for the earlier treatment, to tell him he was no longer needed… in the end, he went with what seemed most likely. He swallowed hard.

"To make an assessment?"

"That's right." The Illusive Man pointed a finger at his guest. "I oversee a million projects, and I like to see returns. This little meeting is my way of scoping out my investment. What results are you going to give me if I take a chance on you?"

Again, an open-ended question. Gavin had always hated these. Give me a multiple choice question, he silently begged. Those were where he shone. And preferably some time to think it over, too.

"Well," he began, "if I'm right—which I'm sure I am—this research could revolutionize the whole field of-"

"Words," his captor interrupted. "Don't waste my time, Rochester. Anyone could stand there and tell me what they expect from their research. I want you to prove to me that I'm not making a mistake giving you such an opportunity as I have."

Privately, Gavin didn't think anyone _could _stand and talk straight to the Illusive Man. His legs were shaking after just half a minute and he was having trouble keeping his thoughts straight.

"I, er… I'm a star student, I have good recommendations…"

As soon as he started, he knew he'd made another mistake. "One last chance," the Illusive Man warned.

The ex-student opened his mouth but nothing came out except a few strangled sounds. His would-be benefactor waited, then shook his head.

"A shame. Well-"

"Wait!" Gavin blurted it out with absolutely no clue what he could hope to say.

Incredibly, the Illusive Man gave him a few more seconds of his time. "I'm listening." The danger in his voice was growing. He was not a man who liked to have his time wasted.

"I… I'll…"

He could feel his future, his prospects, fading away. Sent back to Earth like a talentless child. His name on one unpublished paper that had in all likelihood been trashed already. Fading into obscurity. No family. No practice. No hope. No choices. No impact.

It seemed to him like the asteroid base was pulling away from him and he was floating, lost in space, adrift for eternity. Destined to expire with absolutely no fanfare. No one at the wake. No restart button here. And while that asteroid was moving away, he was letting a long trailing line pass him by, his last hope escaping…

So he grabbed.

"I'll—I'll give my research to the Asari!"

Silence. The two stared at each other.

"What would they do with it?" The leader of more than a billion man asked.

"Probably nothing," Gavin admitted. "At least at first. But someone, eventually, may understand it. If even one surviving Asari reads my research, it will remain alive."

"Then what's to keep me from killing you?"

Gavin spread his hands. "You don't want to kill another Human, right?"

Bzzt! Wrong answer. The Illusive Man stood and seemed to grow terribly tall. "Do not doubt my commitment to Humanity, _boy. _One man is a grain of sand; Cerberus will not hesitate to wash you away if you even seem to pose a threat to us or our goals."

Gavin managed to stay on his feet, somehow. He opened his mouth and closed it wordlessly, like a fish.

The other man sat, looking as if he was perfectly in control of the situation—which, of course, he was. He took a long drag on his cigarette, cufflinks gleaming.

"We'll take a chance on you," he finally said. "I hope your stay in one of our many facilities has impressed upon you just how much you stand to gain if you stand with us—and how much failure could cost you."

Gavin nodded frantically, head bobbing.

"Don't disappoint me," the Illusive Man said simply. And then he was gone.

The lights switched on and the lone man remaining—more a boy, really—walked on wobbling legs to the nearest wastebin. There, an untold number of miles from home, dead to anyone he'd known before the last few days, he was violently and exhaustively sick.


	7. Chapter 7

His new quarters wouldn't have impressed an official, perhaps, but to an ex-student (especially a recently imprisoned one) it was a palace. Frankly, any bed better than a hard cot was paradise. Foam was a luxury he was quite determined to enjoy.

There was a terminal in the room, so naturally once Gavin had woken in whatever passed for "morning" on the asteroid base he signed on, pulled on a pair of typing gloves he found in the desk drawer, and did what research he could.

As it turned out, there wasn't a whole lot he had access to. Cerberus had decided that it was reasonable to let him search for biotic research, published scientific papers, and some news. He checked a few entertainment sites, but they were all blocked—as was anything about Cerberus's history or organizational data. Honestly, it reminded him of the university filters all students learned to live with. Like many, he'd figured out ways around the (usually somewhat inept) University walls. Cerberus was smarter than that, unfortunately, so with his time and resources he had no luck evading it.

After testing his boundaries, so to speak, Gavin went ahead and checked the recent news as well as any new biotic discoveries that might have been made since his capture (predictably, that was zip—zilch—nada). The news wasn't particularly interesting either; some colony had been attacked by pirates, several people carried off, infrastructure damaged. That was life on the fringe: it came with the territory.

Not long after Gavin had logged off, someone knocked at his door. It turned out to be Garth, who was in good spirits for some reason. "Have an Omnitool," he crowed, and tossed one to the ex-prisoner. "And have an energy bar too, fer the road." He tossed that too.

"Mine?" Gavin asked as he awkwardly caught both and began checking the 'tool for any damage. Satisfied, he pulled it on.

"Yours, you sonuvabitch." Garth laughed. "We checked it out and we're satisfied you ain't some kind of hacker." Gavin shrugged: that was true. He found himself relishing the familiar pound of weight.

It made him wonder how Moli-Yarah was managing.

Garth walked his charge from his quarters through the corridors of the asteroid base. The paint on the walls changed from a light yellow to white: research wing. He ate the bar contemplatively, realizing for the first time how hungry he was, but that too was quickly forgotten.

As they passed lab after lab he nearly wrenched his neck trying to catch glimpses of what kind of experiments were being conducted behind the plate glass windows. He couldn't keep a smile off his face.

There was a muffled shout, and a blue ball of energy slammed into a half-broken mech that swayed, buckled, fell. A man in a lab coat, grinning, tugged the mech (it looked something like a crash-test dummy) back upright and threw a thumbs-up to his hidden colleague.

A room full of haphazardly placed cages, cages packed with animals Gavin had never once seen or even imagined before. A short, squat man walked between rows and took notes, counting something off on his Omnitool.

A tall, balding researcher pressed his Omnitool onto a small, electronic safe: after mere seconds of minute adjustments and slight corrections the door swung open. He pulled out a datapad and began to take notes on the safe's security.

To Gavin, it was like Christmas morning. He felt this was, in all the galaxy, exactly where he was supposed to be. He felt that very clearly.

Garth tapped a quick command into his Omnitool, then buzzed the two of them into a fourth room. "Yer new lab," he announced. It may have been a dusty, broken-down and hastily repurposed room; it may have had a couple terminals clearly 10 years old or more and a converted mining mech in clear disrepair sitting listlessly in the back, but it looked like a dream to young Gavin Rochester.

"First assignment," the prison warden indicated a half-open closet with a mop hanging out. "Get this place looking sharp. Someone'll come by t' get you familiar." He grinned. "Good luck, kid. That's the last you'll be seein' of me—unless they throw you in a cell again."

"I'll try to avoid that."

"See that you do."

He gave a little, mocking salute, made his exit and the door slid shut behind him. There was a distinct "click" as it locked itself shut, but Gavin didn't feel trapped. He felt free.

Something like an hour later, the door slid open and Maria waked in. Since the room had no windows (which had probably contributed to its disuse), she was blindsided by the sight that met her eyes. She stopped short and blinked, mouth falling open. "How long have you been working?"

Gavin looked up and cast his gaze around the room. If there was a speck of dust to be found, he couldn't see it. "Something like an hour," he guessed. "It's important to have a clean research lab." He tossed the dusting rag he'd been using into a wastebin.

"That's true," she admitted, and decided not to say that Garth had chosen the dirtiest, most ramshackle lab he could find. Perhaps a practical joke as a retaliation against being forced to—as a prison warden—act like a babysitter.

"So," Gavin straightened and patted off his shirt. His college boy's outfit was getting a little worn and tattered. "You're here to show me around?"

Maria didn't answer right away. Instead, she chewed on her lip and avoided his eyes. Finally she sighed and pinched her brow. "Nope. I'm your test dummy."

He frowned. "That seems like it's beneath your station."

"It is," she bit out.

"Are you being punished? Because if so-"

"Shut it." She opened the door and motioned for him to follow her through. "Let's just get this over with."

They stopped first at what Maria called the Bestiary. The earlier view he'd been offered of a labyrinthine mess turned out to be incorrect: here, taking a view from the actual entrance, Gavin could see that everything was in precise order, like an obsessive-compulsive giant had set down large electric cages with careful attention to orientation and spacing. Each tank, some larger than others, were secured by the same "walls" that Gavin's cell had been barred by. These, thankfully, were a little less colorful. He inspected the cages: no intelligent races were being kept captive, but there were plenty of weird, misshapen creatures all the same.

Gavin leaned down and came face-to-face with a few dog-sized insects he'd swear had been watching him from the moment he walked in. "What are these?" He poked a finger out and waved it, watching as the three bugs halted and regarded him with what seemed like caution.

"These little fellas are Rachni." Their caretaker ambled up and waved his datapad at them. "Nasty little buggers. They almost melted through the floor before we noticed, if you can believe it."

"Interesting. Rachni…" Gavin thought back to a few mandatory history classes he'd taken. And slept through. "Aren't they supposed to be extinct?"

"Yeah, supposed to be." The man shrugged. "Fact is, a couple eggs turn up every now and then. It's not often anyone sees something more substantial." His grin disappeared when he caught Maria's glare.

"What, you caught a queen?"

Maria hung her head, but her colleague smiled. "It's a little bit of an open secret around here. It's the reason for most of our funding. Without 'er, we'd pretty much just be an empty, dead asteroid. It's also why we're here instead of on the beach sipping Piña Coladas." He held out his hand. "The name's Robert Sanchez, by the way."

"Gavin Rochester," the ex-student replied distractedly, and shook it. "They look like ants," he said finally.

"They act like ants," Robert said simply. "Well, super-powered ants. See how smart they're acting?"

In all their conversation, the Rachni had been watching them through their multifaceted eyes, twin tentacles at rest. It gave Gavin an uncomfortable feeling, like these alien insects could understand their every word. "Yes," he said finally, and couldn't suppress a shiver.

"Well, check this out." Robert tapped something on his Omnitool and all at once the insects began to scurry haphazardly around, sometimes colliding with the electrical barrier, one rearing up at them and hissing. He tapped the command again, and they stopped.

"Telepathy," the scientist explained. "We're not quite sure how it works yet, but we can block it with sufficient density or thickness of material. With the queen feeding them instructions, these workers are intelligent. Without her, not so much."

Gavin nodded. "Can I see her? Is she close?"

"In due time, maybe. We don't keep her here." His tone indicated that was the final word on the matter.

Maria looked like she was feeling irritable, but that was nothing new. "Come on," she beckoned from the half-open doorway. "We're not done yet."

Gavin dutifully followed.


	8. Chapter 8

Their second stop was in what he presumed to be the electronics lab. The bald researcher nodded to them as they entered: "Good to see a new face. You can call me Mark. I work with coding." He was several inches taller than Gavin, who stood at about 6'2"; a polar opposite to the previous researcher they'd met not only in size and shape but also in demeanor. Where the jolly beast master had been friendly enough to the two of them, this technician seemed to be actively losing his patience just having anyone else in his lab.

It wasn't all that surprising, honestly. In his days as a student Gavin had met many scientists like Mark: clearly exasperated by the many interruptions the scurrying students brought as they toured from lab to lab. Many of the experiments he'd watched had been overseen by researchers only barely willing to tolerate another set of eyes and round of stupid questions. Many of them only allowed students into their work at all because the university demanded it of them. So it was no surprise that without a similar contract, Mark would be considerably testier.

"Gavin," our hero replied. "I work with Biotics. I mean, I will."

Mark nodded. "So I hear."

A long silence followed, during which Gavin dodged his gaze from Mark (some kind of Asian, permanently furrowed brow, largish nose) and cast his eyes about for something to advance the conversation. Unfortunately, the lab turned out to be empty to the point of almost being boring. Besides a long table supporting several small electronic safes, there was only a single chirping terminal attached to the small orange ring of an Omnitool. Perfect: that was his topic!

"Hey, is that the Omnitool they took from-"

It was here Gavin's brain caught up with his mouth. It caught hold of the wheel, jammed the brakes, and finally flipped the car.

"—Qlfksdj."

Both Maria and Mark blinked. "What?" They asked in unison.

"Qasfsdl," Gavin explained.

Mark looked merely confused, but Maria's gaze implied she thought there was something seriously wrong with him. He supposed that wasn't too much worse than the previous state of affairs: "dysfunctional" was only a little below "crazy."

His brain slowly crawled from the flaming wreckage and lay by the side of the road, sobbing. After its quivering ceased it took a couple deep breaths and regained its footing. This time it managed something coherent.

"What's that Omnitool over there for? Backup in case yours can't break a safe?"

Mark frowned and, thankfully, decided not to pursue Gavin's slip-up. "For one thing, I'm not a bank robber. In fact, I design vaults. I program certain Cerberus security protocols, and apparently that's close enough to Omnitool hacking that I get saddled with a prisoner's used goods." He shot a baleful look at Maria. "For the record, again, Omnitools are not my area of expertise."

"Clearly not," she huffed. "If they were, it might not have taken you 3 days already."

The two glared at each other. Mark spoke first. "Are you finished interrupting my work? I'm sure there's somewhere else you should be."

Maria turned on her heel and swept through the door, almost leaving Gavin behind. What could he do but follow?

Thankfully, the final lab was friendlier.

"Hey, new guy!" The researcher Gavin had spotted through the window dropped the mech he was holding and strode over to offer his hand. Gavin shook it.

"Keith Reynolds," the man announced, and brushed his curly blonde hair out of his eyes. "Good to have you with us. Hope getting here wasn't too rough." He grinned.

"Don't mind him," a chillier voice called. "He tries to make up for bone headedness by being outgoing."

A tall woman, presumably the one throwing warps, tugged off a combat helmet and shook her long black locks free. She was stunning, or would have been if it wasn't for the glare stamped on her Roman face.

"Harsh, Sharon." He was still grinning, despite her callous remark. "Sharon Snyder," he announced. "She does get pretty snide, as the name suggests."

She shot a disdainful look his way. "So funny. You study biotics?" She turned to Gavin, who nodded quickly. "Well, I'm the biotic lead around here. You answer to me, understand?"

Maria opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to argue—but shut it when Gavin merely bobbed his head.

"We're testing targeting VI and running our mechs through the wringer as well." She pointed to the collapsed robot: Gavin watched it whirr and struggle to stand. "You have your own lab, I presume. If there's nothing else…?"

"Uh…"

She looked at him.

"I, uh…"

"Spit it out," she commanded.

"Could… could I stay here? I could… I could do my own experiment just watching you two." He didn't quite meet her eyes.

She hung her head and sighed. "Why on earth should I do that?"

He pointed at Keith. "You'd get to throw a ball at him. Repeatedly."

She fought off a very small smile while Keith's disappeared. Maria cast her a look and she grudgingly relented. "As long as it doesn't interfere with our work, I suppose I could humor you."

Gavin bobbed his head, unable to keep a grin off his face. Once he'd seen that warp slam into the mech, he'd been reminded of the very first experiment he'd ever thought of.

All he needed was a baseball and a couple weights.


End file.
